Colonisation of Clearcut Forests by Ants in the Southern Finnish Taiga: A Quantitative Survey

Abstract

We assessed the colonisation of clearcut forests by ants by using pitfall-trap data collected from clearcut areas of different age in southern Finland. We compared mature forests (age over 120 yr) with areas cleared 0, 2 and 10 yr before trapping. We concluded that the old-forest wood-ant systems are destroyed by clear-cutting, and that this is probably based on the loss of food resources. In the colonisation stage the role of stochasticity is counter-balanced by a number of deterministic species-specific factors in the succession of ant assemblages